Chapter 7 No.7

Discipline through Bereavement

SIXTH SUNDAY IN LENT

1 Thess. iv. 13

"We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, which have no hope."

Of all kinds of sorrow, bereavement is in some senses the sternest, the most irrevocable, and the one in which human compassion is of least avail.

All that we said last week on the discipline of suffering applies here, but with enhanced force. If suffering generally cannot be rationally contemplated outside of the doctrine of a future existence, still less can death be tolerated unless it lead to further life. If sorrow in the bulk needs the Incarnation to throw upon it the light of God's love, still more does this particular grief require the assurance that the finished work of Christ operates within, as well as without, the vail.

Broadly speaking, all over the world there are torn and bleeding hearts mourning the nearest, the dearest; in the vast majority of instances, from the circumstances of the case, men in the beginning or the very prime of life.

The heroism of the women has been as magnificent as that of the men-nay, in a sense, more so. For those who go forth there is the novelty, the excitement, the nerving sense of duty. Their time is so ceaselessly occupied that but little space remains for brooding or for anxious thought, on behalf of themselves or those at home. The men who remain behind, the fathers, brothers, friends, have the priceless boon of daily occupation, often vastly increased in amount. There is no such infallible anodyne of care as plenty of honest work.

But the women-theirs is the harder task, the fiercer trial, of keeping up the brave appearance, the show of cheerfulness, whilst all the time the load of apprehension and fear lies heavy on their hearts. None will ever know the crushing reality of the offering the women are making to their country, in one great stream of self-sacrifice.

Nor can we forecast the end, nor estimate the claims that are yet to be made in the cause of patriotism. The nations engaged, at least the chief of them, are fixed irrevocably in their determination that peace, when it comes, shall be no temporary patching up of hostilities and arranging of indemnities, but a solid, lasting settlement, which shall, as far as possible, place another vast European war out of the range of practical politics.

To tens of thousands there has come the ceaseless yearning for

The touch of a vanished hand,

The sound of a voice that is still.

Now notice how S. Paul deals with the matter. "That ye sorrow not as others which have no hope." There is no injunction here not to sorrow at all; that would be contrary to human nature, and would bespeak callousness rather than resignation. Our Blessed Lord wept at the grave of Lazarus, and in so doing sanctified human grief. The keenest faith, to which the other world is an absolute reality; the fullest hope of the sure and certain resurrection for the dear one; the most disciplined and submissive will which accepts unquestioningly the dispensations of the Father; all these are not proof against the natural grief at the removal of a loved one from this sphere of tender intimacies, into another, where we can only commune with him in thought and prayer.

How often this is illustrated at the death of a chronic invalid who has suffered much. With tears streaming down the cheeks, the mourner will say, "I am so thankful he is at rest." No selfish, rebellious side of grief is exhibited by those tears; only human sorrow, blending in loving harmony with perfect resignation.

Now notice carefully the ground on which S. Paul bases the Christian's hope for the departed; first, faith in the death and resurrection of Christ; "if we believe that Jesus died and rose again." It is a mere platitude to say that the whole of S. Paul's teaching is founded on the actuality of the resurrection. "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (1 Cor. xv. 17). Then out of this fact of the resurrection flows a consequence: the dead, as we call them, "sleep in Jesus," and will be His immediate companions at the last day. We cannot enter into a discussion as to the exact conditions of what is called "Hades" or the "intermediate state"; suffice it to say that one great feature of it is nearness to Jesus, "having a desire to depart and be with Christ" (Phil. i. 23); "absent from the body, present with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. 8). Herein consists the blessed hope set before us in regard to the faithful departed; the crucified, risen, ascended Jesus has them in His keeping; we and they alike are parts of the one great Church, knit into the "Communion of Saints" by the mystic bond of the sacred bread, linked each to the other by mutual prayer; they for us and we for them.

Very beautifully and tenderly does the Archbishop of Canterbury deal with this thought in one of his late sermons:-

"As with bowed head and quivering lip we commend their souls into the hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Saviour we feel how the very passing of those brave and buoyant lives into the world beyond pierces the flimsy barrier between the things which are seen and temporal and the things which are unseen and eternal, and again we can and do give thanks. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living:-

"Nor dare to sorrow with increase of grief

When they who go before

Go furnished, or because their span was brief.

For doubt not but that in the worlds above

There must be other offices of love,

That other tasks and ministries there are,

Since it is promised that His servants there

Shall serve him still. Therefore be strong, be strong,

Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,

Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,

But do the works that unto you belong."

Here is the magnificent prospect of hope for those who mourn: that the Incarnation of our Lord is still working itself out in all its beneficent purposes. By the power of the Holy Ghost, in the Church expectant as in the Church militant, the answer to the constant prayer, "Thy Kingdom come," is being ceaselessly given; and the fulness thereof will be realised in the Church triumphant. The saints on earth and those in Paradise are equally in the hands of the Lord, though the latter have clearer vision and nearer sense of the fact than the former. By some this is used as an argument against the practice of prayer for the departed, but surely this thought of the unity of the whole body leads in exactly the opposite direction. No argument can be adduced against this most ancient and primitive custom, observed by the Jews long before the coming of Christ, but what equally applies to any petition for an absent friend still on earth. In each case they are in the keeping of Him Who knows best and will do right, yet for those still here we pray, believing that in His own way God will take account of our prayers and knit them up into His own dealings, so that they become part of His eternal purposes. When commending the departed to Him, naturally our words will be chastened and restrained because we know somewhat less of the conditions of the "intermediate state" than we do of those of our own dispensation. Somewhat less; for how little do we really understand of the circumstances around us now in all their bearings as they lie open beneath the eye of God. Therefore it is that whenever we pray we must ask in full submission to our own limitations and in the spirit of the Master, "Nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done."

Thank God this matter is not one of argument; no, it lies in another plane: the innate feeling of one who really knows what prayer means and who has grasped in some degree the doctrine of the "Communion of Saints."

A pious evangelical, well fortified with arguments against prayer for the departed, had been nursing her sick sister and taking care of the little daughter of the house. The sister died, and the same evening the motherless girl knelt down at her aunt's side to say her prayers. "Auntie, may I say God bless dear mother?" The whole drift of the aunt's training and theology would have led her to say "No" point blank. There was no time for argument or explanation, for facing the inevitable "If not, why not?" The instincts of natural religion prevailed; the aunt replied, "Yes, dear"; and from that day onward never failed herself to say, when remembering her dear ones, "God bless my sister."

Whatever the effect of such prayers in the other world, there is no shade of doubt that to the bereaved they bring an infinite sense of nearness to their beloved, and of the reality of the life of the world to come.

Thus far we have been speaking of those who may fairly be called the faithful departed, the cases in which hope may be reasonable and assured almost to certainty.

Now let us go a step further. The mind staggers as it contemplates the tens of thousands being hurried into eternity who, either according to the teaching of the Catholic Church or the notions of popular theology, would be deemed unprepared.

We trust, in a dim sort of way, that the all-embracing mercy of God will accept their sacrifice of themselves for their country, and in some fashion place it to the credit side of their account. No doubt He will. But can we not get a more evangelical, and at the same time more catholic, view of the matter? We find it in an extension of our conception of the possibilities of the intermediate state, the condition of souls between death and judgment. Evangelical to the backbone, because it is the work of Christ which we conceive of as being there carried on. Catholic, because the Church from very early times has recognised the idea of the discipline of souls as being a process continued after death. The authority of S. Paul has been appealed to on account of his words to the Philippians (i. 6), "being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ"; and to the Corinthians in that mysterious passage concerning "the fire which shall try every man's work" (1 Cor. iii. 13). The doctrine was developed and materialised till it resulted in those corruptions which were so largely responsible for the Reformation. In their zeal to root out error, the Reformers fell into the opposite extreme and abolished the idea of the intermediate state altogether. Hence arose the popular notion, unknown to the Catholic Church till then, of Heaven or Hell as the immediate issue of death.

Of course, the Church's teaching had regard to the condition of its own members after death, and we cannot press it into an argument as to those not dying, technically, in a state of grace; but at least this much we may say: Surely no intelligent person can contemplate the thought of these vast hosts being hurried off into eternal perdition, and at the same time retain his reason or his faith in a God of love. Whatever the possibilities of the world to come, they are but the extension of the boundless love of God in Christ, and hold out no promise for us if we wilfully neglect our day of grace.

But now to pass on to one further source of consolation which comes in its measure to all the bereaved alike; the chastened joy from the thought of the splendid sacrifice the dear one has been privileged to make.

Take an illustration-a letter from Major-General Allenby to Lady de Crespigny on the death of her son:-

"Dear Lady de Crespigny,-I and the whole of the Cavalry Division sympathise with you, and we feel deeply for Norman's loss. But I must tell you that he died a hero's death. The brigade was hotly engaged, and on the Bays fell the brunt of the fighting on September 1st. Norman, with a few men, was holding an important tactical point, and he held it till every man was killed or wounded. No man could have done more, few would have done so much.

"With deepest sympathy, yours sincerely,

"E.H.H. Allenby."

How the bereaved hearts in the midst of crushing grief must have lit up with gladness at such a record as that!

But to close. The discipline of bereavement consists essentially in the trial of faith, yet at the same time brings with it the power of faith. In bereavement, above all other forms of sorrow, comes the felt need of God; it has been so with countless souls. The answer to the need is the revelation that God makes of Himself in Christ; then comes the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, which dries the tears and heals the broken heart.

Note.-The question of prayer in connection with God's foreknowledge is so admirably treated in "Some Elements of Religion" (Liddon) that we append an extract:-

"What if prayers and actions, to us at the moment perfectly spontaneous, are eternally foreseen and included within the all-embracing Predestination of God, as factors and causes, working out that final result which, beyond all dispute, is the product of His Good Pleasure?

"Whether I open my mouth or lift my hand is, before my doing it, strictly within the jurisdiction and power of my personal will: but however I may decide, my decision, so absolutely free to me, will have been already incorporated by the All-seeing, All-controlling Being as an integral part, however insignificant, of His one all-embracing purpose, leading on to effects and causes beyond itself. Prayer, too, is only a foreseen action of man which, together with its results, is embraced in the eternal Predestination of God. To us this or that blessing may be strictly contingent on our praying for it; but our prayer is nevertheless so far from necessarily introducing change into the purpose of the Unchangeable, that it has been all along taken, so to speak, into account by Him. If, then, with 'the Father of Lights' there is in this sense 'no variableness, neither shadow of turning,' it is not therefore irrational to pray for specific blessings, as we do in the Litany, because God works out His plans not merely in us but by us; and we may dare to say that that which is to us a free self-determination, may be not other than a foreseen element of His work."

For suggested Meditations during the week see Appendix.